NETHERLANDS Law and Practice Contributed by: Alan Littler, Justin Franssen and Chris Adriaansz, Franssen Tolboom
Position on Foreign Jurisdictions The remote gambling licensing regime is aimed at players in the Netherlands. Remote gambling services licensed in the Netherlands are not to be exported to other jurisdictions on the basis of the operator’s Dutch licence. Remote gambling licences obtained overseas are not, and will not be, recognised in the Netherlands. Locally unlicensed gambling offers available to Dutch cus- tomers remain illegal even if the operator in question is licensed abroad. The Dutch Supreme Court, in its 2005 Ladbrokes decision, adopted a very low thresh- old for a gambling offer to be considered “available in the Netherlands”. There is no requirement in terms of specifically “targeting” the Dutch market, nor is it necessary for one or more Dutch residents to have actually participated in a particular offer. 6.2 B2B Licences (Suppliers, Software, Etc) The BGA does not include a licensing system for B2B service providers. In principle, therefore, service providers such as software suppliers and affiliates are free to provide their services to locally licensed remote gambling operators. Licensed operators will be responsible for ensuring that all suppliers comply with regulatory requirements flowing from the Dutch regulatory regime. As such, B2C operators are subject to requirements concerning outsourcing. Licence applicants are required to submit their outsourcing policy to the NGA, which will assess this policy during the applica- tion process and investigate the risks associated with the outsourcing of certain activities to third parties. The NGA will specifically assess safeguards within an applicant’s policy to ensure that all relevant regula- tory requirements will be upheld (and standards met), despite the fact that the applicant intends to rely on third parties for particular elements of their operation. Ultimately, licence holders remain responsible for advertising activities performed by affiliates. In 2025, the chairman of the NGA noted that he is a proponent of a future B2B licensing regime in the Netherlands akin to that in the UK. However, there is no information on a legislative proposal to that effect
at the time of publication of this guide (25 November 2025). 6.3 Affiliates Prior to the opening of the market in 2021, the NGA performed periodic investigations into affiliate market- ing for locally unlicensed gambling offers, and affili- ates have been subject to cease-and-desist orders on the basis of Article 1 (1)(b) of the BGA (ie, the ban on promoting/facilitating unlicensed games of chance). Since the opening of the market, the NGA has inten- sified its enforcement against affiliates promoting locally unlicensed offers. In 2025, this included an uptick in (formal) enforcement against (social media) influencers, and informal enforcement (discussions) with (online) newspapers and marketing agencies. In practice, the NGA provides affiliates 48 hours to discontinue all advertising activities for unlicensed operators. Affiliate marketing for licensed offers is permitted. Affiliates servicing these operators are required to comply with advertising requirements under the BGA (and under secondary legislation) via the licensed operator. In light of the legislative requirements, the NGA published a Policy Rule on Responsible Gam- bling that also applies to affiliate marketing activities aimed at the Netherlands. The ban on untargeted advertising, which entered into force on 1 July 2023, is having a significant impact on affiliates, as the scope of the ban includes untargeted advertisements via the internet (see 9. Advertising ). 6.4 White Labels Neither the regulatory regime nor the NGA provide explicit guidance on the use of white labels. However, the requirements that are in place provide some infor- mation on whether white-label solutions can or cannot be offered under the Dutch gambling regime. Although licence holders are permitted to operate multiple brands and/or domain names under one licence, some white-label solutions are restricted by the “one player account” rule (see 6.1 B2C Licences ) ‒ that is, a licence holder can only offer one player account to any individual player. Consequently, vari- ous actions (including responsible gambling meas-
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